I would like to address the posts by rangergames and 6d6rpg being tagged as spam. These are not spammers, they are sharing the sites with stories and RPG materials. Pretty much only now have I realized that this tag can be abused this way. Please excuse my earlier questioning of this stance, mk. I was naïve. Whoever did it, I would like on the behalf of mentioned users plea to remove this tag. I do read their blogs and it is a legit source of materials. Just because you guys might not be interested it is not by any means spam. While I hardly have any clout here, I do hope that someone might at least look into it.

On the other hand, I can see the reason for this tag. rangergames and 6d6rpg and pretty much anyone who produces content should be an active poster. I can get why this occurred in #rpg, there are hardly any users there to check. To avoid it, please: make comments, discuss. Ask questions, join conversations. If all you guys do is using this place as your RSS, this is wrong and I am hereby retracting any word said in your defence. If you want to be here, please join in and get at least a bit active. That's the point of community, right?

Best Regards

Devac

EDIT: To avoid bulk response, yes I do use the recommended tools and filters. Thanks.

EDIT2: Apparently yet again my shortcomings in language and social graces caused opposite effect to what I was aiming for and generally caused a shitstorm. I'm sorry. I'll try to limit my dwelling outside of the area of my imminent interest. What I have learned from here is that, as yet again, I should have stood the fuck away and let it all play on its own. In the end it does not seem like all that much of a community, but hey, I'm still learning about this place. I do want (and did) apologize, but if this admission is somehow offensive… that's beyond my caring capacity.

I am the one who tagged both of the above users as spam. tacocat's explanation describes exactly why I did so. There are other users who mostly post links to one website, but with only one exception, I haven't marked any of those posts as spam.

When I'm bored, I go to global feed and mark things as spam. Here's my rationale:

1. If a user has commented, or shared posts from any other user, I do not mark their posts as spam.

2. If a user comments on their own posts when someone responds, I also don't mark their posts as spam.

3. If a user has self-promoted several posts in a row that have no shares or comments, I mark their posts as spam. If someone continuously posts things that no one in this community has interest in, it's spam.

4. If someone posts a new post every day, from the same website, then they're posting far more than most other people in the community. This is a good indicator, but not a guarantee, of spam. Most quality posts are not released on a daily basis, because good writing takes longer to read than it does to write.

I have no real problem with self-promotion. A fair amount of our regular uses do it. But I do have a problem with users who are not at all otherwise engaged with the community self-promoting. I have a rather low toleration for "blogspam" as it's commonly called on reddit, and I don't like people using online communities that they are not members of as an advertising platform. I don't think I'm alone in thinking this.

If 6d6rpg and rangergames want to comment on this, I'd be glad to hear their opinions. Assuming they are people, and not bots. If most people would prefer me to block these users rather than mark them as spam, I'll do so, but I marked those posts as spam assuming that most hubskians did not want to see those posts, either. As klein mentioned, if you follow #rpg and block #spam, you should still see those posts, so Devac, I know I'm not inconveniencing you directly.

Also, I'd like to point out that hubski does not work like reddit. #rpg isn't a subreddit, and the content posted with that tag isn't only visible to people who follow that tag. As such, it isn't like reddit, where I can safely ignore posts that don't interest me by not subscribing to #rpg. I would have to block #rpg, which I don't want to do, because several posts using that tag do interest me, just not those posted in excess by a few users. Any post, no matter the tags shows up to everyone who doesn't filter them. It's how Hubski is designed. This is a very small site, so the design works well.

Here's a real-world case where I'm curious about the algebra. Let's take radio_24, who only posts stuff from offiziere.ch, probably because they really liked the bump they got from this:

I found offiziere.ch over on /r/credibledefense, back when it was worth following, and really appreciate having their stuff in my feed. radio_24 has one comment but by and large, they mostly post stuff as part of their linking strategy (I think). It's a defense site. They cover satellite photos and geopolitics. By and large, the vast swaths of content within Hubski aren't going to suit them:

WORTHY OF NOTE: Nobody has tagged offiziere.ch as spam yet but it'll happen. SO WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FOLLOWING HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION:

1) I follow offiziere.ch.

2) multiple people tag offiziere.ch as spam.

3) I see an offiziere.ch link, that has been tagged as spam, and I share it (without un-tagging it).

QUESTION 1) Do people who follow me, but filter spam, see the post?

QUESTION 2) Do people who don't follow me, but filter spam, see the post?

QUESTION 3) Is there (or should there be) a mechanism such that filtering people who share "spammed" content erase the "spam" label?

I post only stuff from offiziere.ch, because that's my site. On reddit, they demand that I have to post other articles from other sites -- but why should I do that. So I stopped to post my stuff on reddit and moved to Hubski. I don't see why that should be tagged as spam. All articles on offiziere.ch are free, it isn't a commercial site, you don't have to got there ... If Hubski would tag my site as spam, I would stop immediate to post anything here. I don't know if a overenthusiastic tagging of spam really serves the community in sharing their content.

And I appreciate it. And in case you aren't following along on this page, there's a lot of discussion at the moment as to how we, as a bottom-up, leaderless community, handle spam.

To be clear - I appreciate your content, and follow it. I'm asking for clarification from the coders on how that content would be shared if someone decided to tag your content as spam. We're all figuring this stuff out; now is a great time to chime in (as you did).

QUESTION 2) Do people who don't follow me, but filter spam, see the post?

QUESTION 3) Is there (or should there be) a mechanism such that filtering people who share "spammed" content erase the "spam" label?

This is a tough nut. As it stands, filters trump follows. The reasoning is that if you don't want to see something or someone, you really mean it. I don't want a filtered user showing up in my feed due to a tag they use, and I don't want #thebeatles showing up in my feed because someone I follow happens to have poor taste in music (ducks).

The real issue here is the community tag. The upside of the community tag is to put posts where they ought to be, whether it is #writebetterdammit or #spam. The downside is that people can disagree on where things ought to be.

I've been thinking a bit on this. Perhaps giving #spam special treatment was not the best approach. It pushes the balance towards the notion that we need people tagging things that are bad more than we need people tagging things as good.

I am thinking that a different approach to the community tag, and/or a better display of global might produce better results.

So I'm not particularly interested in beating you about the head and shoulders on this, but as it's one of the few splendid examples where you're actually exploring the utility of tags, I feel I oughtta make an effort.

I think filters should trump follows, but I think that the fact that they're binary always means you end up with boolean bad acting.

I think "spam" has to get special treatment because it's the most divisive trivial issue faced by people on the Internet. Some people freak out about one bad message; some people get 400 spam messages a day, buy software to deal with it and move on. Considering I've been pushing a more refined taxonomy for years and you've been resistant, let's try spam as a special case.

Let me set my spam "tolerance" and let spam messages get wiped away when more than one person tags them as spam. So for example, if I have my spam tolerance set at 3, it would take 3 people tagging something as spam before I stop seeing it. Likewise, since I have given 3x the strength to spam than anything else, that filter no longer trumps the follow... unless something has been tagged 3 times.

Set everybody's spam tolerance at more than 1 - maybe it's 2, maybe it's more - and let's see what happens. That gives you one tag with an affinity fader, like I've been hammering on about for like three years now, without you having to completely reorganize the site hierarchy.

3. If a user has self-promoted several posts in a row that have no shares or comments, I mark their posts as spam. If someone continuously posts things that no one in this community has interest in, it's spam.

And, uh, now we have a moderator. Who I've never heard of.

mk, I will go ahead and register my dissent one more time and then shut up about it.

Well, a community tag of objective spam would be great -- i.e. the pseudo-Russian gibberish stuff that shows up every once in a while. I'd use that. This isn't that. And further there's simply no point to this weird effort to tag a bunch of SEO stuff spam, even if the success rate were 100 percent, which it isn't. That's what filtering users is for.

I've been thinking on it.

I trust ya.

While we're here, have you considered knocking the second | off of quotes markup? Only the first one is really necessary, and the second one adds a significant amount of annoyance to type.

I did not write this because it inconveniences me, but because I have seen it (in my opinion) misapplied. I am using both tag #rpg and filter #spam. I did send message, wanted to provoke response from the two blogs that I do know about and in a way invite them to join conversations. If not, then again as stated above, I have explained that I do not see the point in defending it and no-participating people who go here for promotion are missing the point.

Thanks for explanation. And thanks for explaining tags, although I do know how it works and don't treat it as a subreddit. Judging from the direction of responses I might have conducted it badly but I do think that it was a subject worth sharing, as important to me.

I don't want to filter you, though, because the posts you make are interesting. If you've gotten responses from those two blogs, I'd also love to hear about them. If they are just folks who want people to read what they have to say, and they're just shy and haven't posted anywhere else on hubski as a result, then I'll apologize to them, assuming they are interested in participating in the community.

I can understand that it probably sucks that posts that you found interesting were marked by someone as spam. I can also sympathize with anyone else who shared (or, especially badged) something that was then marked as spam*. If someone tags something as spam, it does effectively say "this should not have been posted" and that isn't fair to someone who does find value from that post. So, I'll stop marking what I consider "blogspam" as #spam for now, until there is more discussion from the community on the subject.

*I did not mark anything as spam that was shared by any active user. I don't know who would do this, especially to posts that have been badged. This is clear abuse of the #spam tag. Maybe it should be that posts that have been badged cannot be marked as spam, and badging posts removes a spam tag? Or, maybe give posters with some amount of hubwheels (20? 50?) the ability to remove tags?

Thank you for both consideration and measured response. That's pretty much everything what I would like to see and get out of all that.

As of marking their posts as 'shared', that's a good point but on less popular tags it could get tricky. For example, I'm not a particularly slow reader but usually do a lot of other stuff (example: I'm writing a paper as we speak) and simply forget to mark it afterwards. Although I'm just bellyaching at this point, so feel free to disregard it.

I have a sincere question, this is legitimately to gather information so if you could please answer honestly, that would be awesome.

What is your intent when posting to Hubski? Is it to get traction for your website, is it to try and garner discussion around your content? Is Hubski a place you spend any time at beyond posting your content? How many other aggregators do you post your content on? Do you follow anyone or any tags on Hubski? If you were an active member of the Hubski community would you assume that a user that only posts to one site that has the same name as his/hers and has never commented is a spammer?

I think anyone should be allowed to post content so long as it's not overtly offensive. I also think the community has done a pretty good job of dilineating between what is an is not spam. They seem to have perhaps gotten it wrong here though.

Passively adding in the "overtly offensive" caveat is very disingenuous btw when it wasn't a part of the discussion to begin with.

What are you talking about? I believe that no content should be dissaloud on Hubski unless it is overtly offensive, which yours clearly is not. How is that disingenuous? I think if you spent any time in this, very real community, you'd know that I'm a lot of things but disingenuous isn't one of them.

Given your description of how you use Hubski, I find it comical that you posted that you are "OUT" in a way that assumes it's our loss.

Still, best of luck to you. Maintaining a site with original content is a helluva lot of work.

Maybe if their names weren't also their URLs people wouldn't assume it's SEO spam. They also don't contribute other than links to their own sites, again looks like SEO spam. All signs point to personal SEO spam so it isn't exactly an abuse when the community is the only moderation.

I don't disagree and I do see these reasons. This is why I was addressing them publicly and showing what to me could be considered as someone's false judgement. As stated in post, if they will not change their behaviour afterwards I will not defend them. Spam is spam, if they will not attempt to change, I am not going to oppose labelling their posts as spam. But I do think that this is very likely a false accusation.

I don't have expertise to point spam when it comes to economy, politics, poetry (or humanities in general), I do fancy myself as someone capable to do it here and linked content is not it. All I want is to bring it to public and mentioned users, not accuse anyone. Just to make it extra explicit.

I am very sorry to hear that my (roughly) weekly posting of the content of our RPG blog has caused such division amongst the community. It was never my intent to bore or to offend. I have a selection of sentences to express:

* In future the 6d6rpg account will be making a greater effort to engage with the Hubski community. I've found this difficult in the past because of the quietness of the #RPG tag. I'll start browsing global more often and hopefully find something I feel I have something to contribute to.

* A good way to help me engage more with the community are comments on what I've posted, of which there are few. What #RPG content does Hubski want to read? I'm always on the look out and am receptive to new ideas for stories and adventures.

* All posts by 6d6rpg are hand posted and are not reposted here by an SEO bot. The text around the post may be similar because it is damned hard to write good copy and I tend to copy+paste what little I have.

Well, that was a very nice comment, thank you for posting it. I want to mention that from where I sit neither yourself or Rangergames has posted anything that is at all controversial or worth blocking or banning etc. Hubski exists for people to share personal content. We welcome it. There is no doubt that you will get more interaction from the community if you're more involved in it, but that is a suggestion and not a mandate. We have tools to combat the wrongful tagging of posts as spam. Namely, the community tag.

If users don't like a particular site, they can either ignore the user or the sites domain. I think that more than anything what this entire thread is showing me is that people aren't aware of the tools at their disposal. If they are aware of them, perhaps they are not using them correctly. Also, there seems to be a disconnect in what is and is not "permissible" on Hubski. If someone has a website and they want to post links to their website, go for it! A lot of time and work goes into making those websites and that original content. If it's good, chances are people will share it and interact with it. Another Takeaway is that if someone tags something as spam and I am not filtering the spam tag, it should have no impact on me.

We discussed much of this on our Hubski team call last night and there are some corrections coming. But, please don't think you've done anything wrong. Personal content is not a sin

That's actually a very thoughtful response to all of this noise. Thank you.

If it makes you feel any better, you're not actually causing all that much division. Different members on here just view content differently, as is evident in this thread. Besides, Hubski users love to discuss Hubski meta. I think it's a reflection about how much this place actually means to a lot of us.

While I can't say that I've read any of your postings (though after this positive post I'm inclined to check you out), I do game a bit myself. I mostly play D&D. I cut my teeth on 2nd ed. (I don't miss THAC0), loved 3.5, hated 4th, and am indifferent to 5th. One of my buds is an avid gamer, playing an RPG ruleset that catches his fancy, mainstream or homebrew. I've been trying to get him to join Hubski for forever, so I might point him your direction to get him interested.

I think we need to go back to our roots. 2 or maybe 3 years ago we said we would only hide items that could not be seen as anything but spam.

We have done so in unique cases where a user or set of users has literally spammed the global feed with insane and worthless content. Like hundreds of posts in a few hours. And by worthless, I mean content that no one would ever want to read (if they could even read it through the ads).

For example, the WWE free video links or whatever the fuck they were. That's spam. There were multiple usernames like jess3432 posting gibberish titles to ad-filled shit sites.

Someone posting their own content, not matter what level of interest it garners from the Hubski community, that is legitimate content is not spam. Even if that is all they post. Even if they don't comment.

I agree with kleinbl00 on this one, use the tools provided. The ability to correct this exists.

Also, if something is tagged spam, anyone with the ability to add a community tag can tag it otherwise. Tag it "gaming" or "rpgg"... whatever. If you disagree, use the tools to change the circumstance. If you can't do that, use the tools to change your feed by not filtering spam and by following rpg, or better yet the domain itself.

If someone is clearly tagging content that is, without question, not spam then please bring this to my attention directly. I'm not sure that this is not the case here though.

That said, if the NYTIMES had a Hubski account, would their posts be marked spam? Probably not. So, it's important for YOU to get a badge to give so you can have the ability to community tag posts and remedy this.

Actually If the NYTimes had an account it should be marked as spam, because that's what it is. Just like if Donald trump or Hillary had one it should also be spam. Self promotion by non community memebers is in its nature spam, its just hard to combat once you get really big.

I agree with you in the sense that if any of those people or their staff were posting interesting unique stuff to hubski. What I wouldn't want to see is someone posting every press release and every Twitter update. I think that stuff would self filter pretty well but it would still clog up global just as badly as spam does today.

Same thing with a nytimes writer for example. I would love to have him or her post their own articles as long as they are willing to talk about them here. I would not want to see the nytimes market team post anything and everything.

That, then, wouldn't be "personal" content. Hubski becomes just another channel in a truly benighted approach to SEO. Implied in the statement that "Personal content isn't a sin" is the counter-statement "impersonal content is."

Basically the only thing I think is important to reiterate, which has been touched upon here, but maybe not as clearly as I'd like:

anyone can change the community tags, if you don't like that it's tagged as spam change the tag.

Don't be stupid and get into a war to change the tag back again if someone changes it back to spam. Or, I mean, do. But then you're not going to have any time to spend interacting with the actual community - on the other hand, if any person is that pedantic about how they want posts to appear tagged, I probably should be thankful they are removing themselves from discussion via becoming obsessive about tags.

Sometimes I get drunk and like to shittag things. I only tag "spam" if it really truly looks like spam, and am I a drunk asshole? You bet your Pinacle Whipped I am! That happens to be life, though. At any rate, the invisible, pretend internet damage is minimal and easily undone. Instead of asking everyone to do something the way you believe it should be done, just...live by example. Besides, there are going to be new people here all the time. Even if you got the whole community to agree to doing something one certain way (yeah, good luck with that), you're going to have to have the same discussion tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

Thanks for the heads-up Devac , but the back-handed passive-aggressive back-pedal is offensive. Too bad I couldn't find out more easily when I'm tagged as spam so I can fight my own battles and so I can judge whether or not its worth it to remain in such a "community".

I'm actually on your side in the spam issue, I think that leaving the community to tag spam is probably not going to work super well, but I've chosen not to voice that concern for a number of reasons. Additionally, you probably should be notified when you're tagged as spam so you can fight your own battles.

But (Keeping in mind I'm not speaking on behalf of hubski as a whole, and that I wouldn't consider myself any more popular than you are on this site), you seem to really resent a community that you've never talked to before. You could have been a part of the community and made an informed decision as to whether or not you'd like to stick around based on your interactions with us. If you had done that, you'd know that hubski is constantly changing, and that this post is little more than the community trying to define itself and figure out what to do with posters like you--something that I find really interesting to watch.

No one hates you, no one is being back-handed or passive-aggressive, we're just trying to figure out where we stand on spam, and what spam is and isn't. As far as I know, this hasn't been discussed to these lengths before now. Your input could be valuable to this process, too, but you'd need to make a case for your side of the argument. That's how hubski works, it takes effort. Think your position through, defend yourself, and discuss. You're questioning whether or not you want to remain in a "community," but it doesn't seem like you've really tried to be a part of it in the first place.

I love the type of things that you're posting, I think having you around could be great! I've never followed #rpg before, but I followed it thanks to this post. I'm not asking that you change anything about what you're doing. If that's how you want to run your hubski experience, I think you should be able to do it. But don't write us off as a community so quickly, please. If you want to get mad, I don't blame you, but try to understand the machinations at work on a site like hubski, and don't call us all pompous jerks for being indecisive about your type of account.

Everyone can feel free to disagree with me however much they want on this post, I might be totally out of line here. Just my two cents.

So providing content isn't "interacting"? Any member of the community could've interacted with me as well at anytime. Non-interaction is not the fault of any one party. Plus, every time I see (or hear) "community" being thrown around it's simply the shield behind which those pompous jerks like to hide.

Providing content can count as interaction, but you have to understand where the line is blurred between self-promotion and spam. We're just trying to figure out how we define that.

Like I tried to say in my last comment, hubski is a user-moderated space. You can't get mad that the users are trying to moderate. That's how this website functions, and I'd say that it works pretty damn well most of the time.

No there isn't spam is useless crap or purely advertisement with no real value or relation to its tags. Self-promotion would only become spam when it becomes obnoxious and impossible to avoid. And yes I can, those "moderators" need to think before they act with at least the minutest amount of intelligence.

Dude, I'm saying that your content is not spam. It should not have been marked as spam. You are not a spammer. I'm saying that it, in many ways, resembles the SEO spam that we've been having problems with recently.

If you want to change the way things happen on hubski, insulting people is not the way to achieve this. I'm sorry if you've been offended by anything that happened on this post, but this is a thread full of people discussing your issue, plenty of them in support of you. If you want to change the site, discuss rather than deride. If you don't want to change the site, stop complaining.

2) It cannot be allowed to fail. If it isn't working at the moment, methods need to be changed so that it does work.

Communities are governed either top-down or bottom-up. Top-down is the most obvious because it's a hierarchy that humans have ascribed to since, like, fire. The problem with top-down hierarchies is that the community size and behavior is limited by governance. Good governance, good community. Bad governance, bad community. Which means if you want a good community you need the incentives necessary to attract governance - prestige, money, fulfillment, etc. Which, really, means money. Reddit worked up to a point - small community, active involvement from people with a vested interest in its success, etc. Eventually the number of people that didn't add outnumbered the people who did, and the only people interested in governance left are either (A) young and inexperienced or (B) power-hungry. Facebook works because their moderators are paid.

So Hubski either needs to pay people to keep the content pure, or it needs to refine an architecture such that it NEVER requires moderation. Switching from self-moderated (bottom up) to designated-moderated (top-down) will kill the community. Not immediately, but inevitably.

Unrealistic goals need to be reconsidered. And to avoid blindness, every goal must be considered allowed to fail.

The creation of good leaders is every bit as part of human nature as the corruption of bad ones. Trying to wish away that fact is futile - and wishing away is all that's happening here.

For meaningful discussion, some form of top-down moderation absolutely is required. That does not mandate imitating any particular other site's manner of top-down moderation, however. So ask yourself, what about top-down moderation is harmful?

If you want to ensure that no central party can cause harm, the only possible answer is for each cluster of users to host it themselves, e.g. like Diaspora - and likely also exchange the data over something like Tor to prevent ISP-level meddling. You can't just pretend that any single host or network is infallible. (And related - currently, on Hubski, whoever is the first to post a certain link gets unquestioned moderatorship over that thread, which is clearly worse than subreddit moderators who have to post at least some sort of rules).

If you want to create communities under the fundamental requirement, there has to be something better than following users (who won't share everything I want to read) or following tags (which offer absolutely no moderation). Think about how small communities work on Reddit - someone has an idea for a subject, they create a new subreddit, act as its (usually sole) moderator, people post/view content there. Since the moderator only has localized power, corruption is minimal, and since they do have localized power, abuse is also minimal. To expand from that smallness, remember that there are often multiple small communities with a similar focus, with some number of overlapping subscribers, but completely unrelated moderators.

To actually produce a workable system, we need something like: every user is the moderator of their own personal subreddit on every single subject, but anyone can post in that provided they have appropriate ranking (settable per user+tag to either "whitelisted" or "not blacklisted"). Allow anyone to add tags to any posts, but the tags will only be relevant to people who (directly or indirectly) trust them for that tag - have something similar to "upvoting the fact that a tag applies". Do not make it possible to follow users, except in a specific tag (but do provide a standard tag for "follow me in this for when I start a new tag"). But do have the sense of tag relationships - perhaps a "suggestions" stream from any particular stream you're viewing.

For meaningful discussion, some form of top-down moderation absolutely is required. That does not mandate imitating any particular other site's manner of top-down moderation, however. So ask yourself, what about top-down moderation is harmful?

Says who? This site has meaningful discussions day in and day out, for years without any top-down moderation. I've been on two other social communities before Hubski that, while they employed different mechanics, also lacked any top down moderation and meaningful discussions were had all the time then too. They also had different social structures for handling goons. Feeling fed up with Reddit, I actually lurked this site for about two weeks before creating an account. Know what made me want to join? The meaningful discussions.

Furthermore, it's not just on the internet, but people have meaningful discussions on numerous topics day in and day out without any outside moderation. Moderation isn't what drives meaningful discussions, it's the desire for connection and belonging, the desire to both expand who we are as people while also feeling valued and validated by our peers. There is an socially created mechanism that encourages good behavior and its called manners. You don't need your mother standing over your shoulder every day to remind you of good manners.

Where things fall apart, as Reddit can be a great example sometimes, isn't by moderation or lack there of, but anonymity. Anonymity by hiding behind a screen name and anonymity of being just one voice lost in a sea of tens of thousands. When no one is gonna remember you from the next comment down the line, all of the sudden social accountability goes out the window.

If you want to create communities under the fundamental requirement, there has to be something better than following users (who won't share everything I want to read) or following tags (which offer absolutely no moderation). Think about how small communities work on Reddit - someone has an idea for a subject, they create a new subreddit, act as its (usually sole) moderator, people post/view content there.

Site mechanics are like game mechanics. Final Fantasy and Call of Duty are both video games, but they both play out completely differently. Hubski, Reddit, and Facebook are all social sites, but their mechanics also play out completely differently as well. They all have their advantages and they all have their drawbacks. Hubski is actually a pretty nifty setup, in that you can follow users, tags, and even websites, and depending on who and what you follow, your feed is influenced. Just because you follow a certain user, it doesn't mean they control all that you see. Users can't control what you do and do not see, only you can control that.

To actually produce a workable system, we need something like: every user is the moderator of their own personal subreddit on every single subject, but anyone can post in that provided they have appropriate ranking (settable per user+tag to either "whitelisted" or "not blacklisted"). Allow anyone to add tags to any posts, but the tags will only be relevant to people who (directly or indirectly) trust them for that tag - have something similar to "upvoting the fact that a tag applies". Do not make it possible to follow users, except in a specific tag (but do provide a standard tag for "follow me in this for when I start a new tag"). But do have the sense of tag relationships - perhaps a "suggestions" stream from any particular stream you're viewing.

Nifty ideas, but I think they'd have drawbacks as well. mk is always up for suggestions though. The thing is, the mechanics of moderation for this site actually compliment the structure of this site very well. At the same time, I've been here just a little under a year, just like you, and I've seen multiple occasions where mk has deliberately and publicly made changes to the site mechanics to address certain issues. Every single time he does, he always says to one affect or another “Let's see how this plays out. We can always change it.” Think about that for a second. You're using the site of a man who values his creation so much, he's not only willing to accept its imperfections, but actively polishes them out. He wants to make this site better, not for income, but so that we as users can feel welcome to stay and participate, day in and day out. If for nothing else, that type of ownership makes this a site worth being a part of.

I disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but I'm on mobile right now and to write a full response would take the better part of this year. That said, I do have to respond to this . . .

Since the moderator only has localized power, corruption is minimal, and since they do have localized power, abuse is also minimal. To expand from that smallness, remember that there are often multiple small communities with a similar focus, with some number of overlapping subscribers, but completely unrelated moderators.

Uh, no. There are totally power hungry mods that mod multiple subreddits, sometimes related sometimes unrelated, that will not hesitate to ban you from every subreddit they control if you cross them. The mods can be just as goonish, if not worse sometimes, than regular users.

Perhaps those of us who have been here more than a year are less interested in giving up than you are, and view a discussion of "what to do about this" as a reason to discuss change instead of throwing in the towel.

We're discussing how one man's spam is another man's treasure... and the fact that the site already handles this problem. How that leads to the maxim "For meaningful discussion, some form of top-down moderation absolutely is required" is beyond me. And I don't need to ask myself shit - I was a default mod on Reddit for like six years. I've had lengthy conversations about moderation and social design with every manager Reddit had from 2008 until 2015. So rather than ask, I'll tell you what's wrong with top down moderation:

Eventually the number of people that didn't add outnumbered the people who did, and the only people interested in governance left are either (A) young and inexperienced or (B) power-hungry. Facebook works because their moderators are paid.

Of course small communities work on Reddit. Small communities work anywhere. The trick is in going from a small community to a large one, where Reddit falls down catastrophically... and I say that as someone who moderated 7 million users at a time. When I talk about the problems of top-down moderation I speak from experience. When you talk about "localized power" you reveal your naivete as to the system - the site-wide blacklists, the collusion, the crowdsourced spam .xml files, all the other stuff that has sprung up ad hoc to deal with the fact that Reddit Inc doesn't pay people nearly enough to manage this stuff so there isn't nearly the core of Admins necessary. Hubski will never go there. EVER. So its approach MUST be different.

More different than I think you even try to understand. We have a workable system, where every user is the moderator of their own personal subreddit on every single subject. We don't allow anyone to add tags to any posts, we allow anyone who has participated in the community by a negligible amount to do so.

So I reiterate: this is not a "fail" scenario, never was, never will be. This is a "refinement" scenario and I maintain that the system is fully functional within the parameters being discussed.

Or maybe this is people showing what they consider to be valued contributions. Submissions by people who actively participate in the community are almost never tagged as spam. Self promotors, regularly are, and it's not just these two rpg submitters who get tagged. I really feel, that on Hubski, the social value of the user making a submission is just as, if not more important than the quality of the item being submitted.

Yeah, there have been many examples in the past of people posting content from their own site and interacting with the community. This changes everything. The content could even be less than stellar and it's forgiven because an effort is being put forth to participate in the community.

We encourage people to post their own content but spamming is something completely different. We even created DVH to facilitate this.